Janis Zech: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab. I'm here with Philip, and our guest today is Andy Mowat. I hope I pronounced this correctly. Almost utter every name.

Andy Mowat: You don't worry about it. Everyone — I'm used to people pronouncing my name in many ways.

Janis Zech: How do you pronounce it properly?

Andy Mowat: Mowat, like the lawn.

Janis Zech: Okay. Mowat. Okay. Great. So today we're gonna talk all about RevOps careers. You have been a VP many times at some great companies like Carta, CultureAmp, just to name a few. I think many people know you from LinkedIn and you recently started a new venture where you actually deal with that topic quite a bit. Before we jump in, maybe you can give the audience a quick introduction about yourself and then we'll talk all about RevOps careers and how to be successful in RevOps.

Andy Mowat: Yeah. I've run RevOps at four unicorns — Upwork where I fell into it. We can always talk about how you — I think we're not gonna talk as much about how do you get into RevOps, but I fell into it there, figured out I was good at it. Then Box, Culture Amp, and most recently Carta. As well as that, I've also run kind of the demand gen marketing side at two of those companies and sales at one, or SMB sales at one. So I've got a lot of experience on that. Always say you've got to get punched in the face in your career at some point when you can't follow your mentor and when people aren't calling you to pull you out. I got punched in the face when I graduated from business school in two thousand and one. There were no jobs, period, full stop. And so I had to learn how to get really good at networking, the brand, being really clear and focused on what you want, and then how do you go get that? And so in March, I left Carta to start Whisperd. I've been building it for a while, kind of just the databases and all of that stuff, nights and weekends, but it's been live fully since then. We help VP, call it head of and beyond people, because when you pop your head up, it's really scary. The jobs aren't posted at that level. You don't know which companies are breaking out anymore because the last time you looked was four years ago and the rate of change is so fast. The recruiters that you all knew, they've all moved to different firms or they've gone in house or they've gone to VCs. And then you start to get senior enough and there's all these additional networks that you didn't realize. Right? There's this whole VC tower network that is super powerful when you get to VP. And so we have the deepest database of unposted roles for go to market leadership. We probably see, I'd say, ninety to ninety five percent of all, including the unposted RevOps roles. And so at any given time, we'll have, like, twenty to thirty top RevOps leaders in Whisperd collaborating and looking together. We also have the network to help them do that. And so I spend a lot of time talking to lots of top VCs and top CROs about those roles. And then we see them and then we help people connected to those. So that's what we do.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I love it. I think sounds like a great offering for experienced RevOps professionals and something that I know, at least from my experience, a lot of people are actively or passively looking. And I think the other piece is right, like how do you find these breakout companies, which is really difficult to do, but can be career defining.

Andy Mowat: Yeah. If you pick the wrong company — there's obviously the roles everyone knows this about, but we also have when people go interview or when people work there, they whisper to us what they know about companies. So we know every gossip and everything about every company. And so we know there's one RevOps role that's been bouncing around for five months that it's like nobody should take that role. So we know a lot of these insights. But I think at a fundamental level, when you join a company matters a lot. We talk about breakout companies, right? If you join that's super mature and it's just about market share gain, it's just not gonna be fun. And so I think a lot of what we try to help people do is find those breakout companies and join those and then avoid the toxic situations as well too.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Love it. Love it. Sounds awesome. All the best for this company. So we wanna talk about the road to VP. Right? So, I mean, you've seen this many times. I'm sure many of people who've worked with you are now VPs at successful companies. So what's a typical career path to become a VP of RevOps?

Andy Mowat: There is no typical path. I think there are strategies that you can take. I look at it and I say, there's kind of — what is it? I've counted them up. One, two, three, four, five, six superpowers within RevOps that I think about. Right? And so I think you've got to know what yours is. So I would say that they're like SOPs, GTM systems, sales strategy, post sales ops, mops, and enablement. And generally, you'll see people come up in one of those and they'll come up to a lead or a director level. And then you see kind of two paths. One is they go to a shitty little company and they take a head of role. And if that shitty little company breaks out, then that can mature into a VP. But oftentimes those shitty little companies don't break out. So I'll see some people that will have like three or four shitty little companies head of. And so we've got a really fun — we've got like ninety five playbooks on your career on Whisperd. They're all free. We've got one which is like one versus two. Do you want to be a head of at a tiny little company and here's the pros and the cons of that? Or do you want to go be a number two at a larger company? So generally, the methodology that I guide people, especially if you have no name companies, is fight like crazy to work for a great VP and know which of those six superpowers you have. And ideally that VP will shuffle you around. So at Culture Amp, I had the head of post sales ops. He's like, I want to be a full RevOps person. So I started giving him pieces of deal desk or planning and different things like that. And I had the head of mops who was kind of the rock that role. So I gave him part of SOPs and we're constantly shuffling people around to nurture careers. We've been doing similar stuff at Carta too, right? So I deeply care about those people. And I think that is a great way to learn all the pieces. And so ideally when you're picking your company, you're picking a company that is all the RevOps is together. I think we all talk a lot about that. I wouldn't wanna go work at a place that just has RevOps — to me, it should be like CS Ops, MOPS, SOPs. You could give or take the enablement or the systems piece. Sometimes those are in, sometimes they're out. But at a fundamental level, you need those three together. And so I wouldn't go to a company that doesn't have all of it as a combined holistic function where the CRO gets that. So we can talk a lot about how do you pick the company where you go to. But then I think you've got to figure out how to learn different skills. So I believe data and understanding DBT and data architectures and AI is more and more critical as well too. So I almost don't hire people that can't do SQL and don't understand how to use data. Ironically, I'm wearing the DBT shirt today. If you don't know what DBT is, that's probably a strike against you in this world. I just heard the CRO of Shopify on a podcast talking exactly about that. It's like, I don't hire people without those skill sets. So that's I think the skill set mix. I think the other piece that's maybe a good one to talk about is what's the difference between a VP and a director? I've got a really good article on what is director level. At Box, the COO, Dan, would just sit up on the company every six months and say, this is what a director is. And we believe in it and we're not negotiating and there's no title inflation. So I've written that article, right? And I can drop it in the notes so we can do something. But at a fundamental level, you've got to be able to manage up. You've got to be able to force trade offs. I hear so many RevOps director level people who maybe aren't ready to be directors say like, oh, I'm swamped. I can never get any resources. I'm like, I've never had that problem. You have to be able to articulate the strategy for your function and bring people along. You have to be able to bring actionable insights on the data rather than just metrics. Then you have to be able to really drive projects well cross functionally. And so if you can't do that well, you're going to get stuck at lead/director. The job of a VP is to lead great directors. And so if you hire great directors, they need to be able to manage up to you. Right? So I share that article every time I join into a company and people can't operate at that level. It's challenging. And I think a lot of people with the title of director don't actually operate at director level.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. This is something I also personally had to learn. Like, when I first met, like, a director that I worked with at a previous company, this was the first director that actually showed me, okay, here's someone who actually wants me to become more successful in my current role in the sense of, like, rising, you know, climb up the ladder, like, corporate career ladder together with her. And so she has a strong ally in me. I have a strong ally in her. You know, we support each other, and we build out our career here together, which is something I've never had experience, like, in the ten years before. It was just completely different culture and setup. Like, I also climbed the career ladder there. Right? But it was like a different organizational structure. It's hard to compare the two. But, you know, like, if you work in a company that — I think, you know, it's like, I don't know, like, five thousand employees stock listed and so on, right — I think you need to find these people, ideally also, obviously, at a scale up and so on. Right? But I think, like, the more, like, corporate, so to speak, the company organization that is, like, your boss is just such an important, like, person to make a decision based on whether you want to work there or not.

Andy Mowat: I couldn't agree more. I say there's basically two things. We've got articles on all this stuff in Whisperd. I'm dropping them in the chat as we go. Feel free to share them with the audience. But I pick companies on two things. Are they breaking out? And are they during the breakout phase or not? And who do I work for? And those are basically the only two things I care about. I don't even care about comp. Because if it's breaking out, you're gonna get — I've been in four unicorns. Every single one of them within nine months, they've given me more functions to take over as well too. And so to me, I don't worry as much. I mean, in bigger, more mature companies, honestly, they have total comp rewards teams. They're gonna pay you fairly based upon your experience. Clearly, negotiate like crazy, but I'm never picking a job based upon the comp. I'm focused so much on like, is it breaking out? And then the how do I pick who I work for is so critical on that side. I can talk more about that. But yeah, if you're picking the wrong person, you can't manage up to them, if they don't understand the value of, in this case, RevOps, if they can't give you that air cover at key moments in time — then if your personality and their personality don't mesh, doesn't matter. It's just the worst. It's not fun and it won't help you move your career forward.

Janis Zech: On the director level, if I basically apply as a director, what would you say are traits to look for in a VP to join under? Other than maybe you get along really well, right?

Andy Mowat: Yeah. So I've got that article. I just dropped it in, but I can kind of run through it a little bit, which is like who you work for matters a lot. One thing I do is actually reflect on myself first. So I have a user manual on how I work. And this is the way I tick. And I'm going to work well with some bosses and bad with others. So I'll give you an example. When I joined Carta, I worked directly for the COO. I was peer to the CRO and the CMO. And I was like, wow, this guy seems really good, but he's a little quieter and he's really deeply thoughtful. And so I share my user manual with him and I say, listen, my ask is, will you read it? And can we have lunch and talk about it? And so the reactions to that could be like, no, I don't have any fucking time. You want the job or not? But that's not what he did. He spent three hours with me and we talked, we met, we figured out how we're wired, and it was really good. So that's going to tell you a lot about somebody, right? And that would be kind of the primary way that I've found to do it. Do they care about your career? Are they asking questions? How are you thinking about your career? I definitely diligenced Tim heavily and it came back incredibly positive. And then there's a whole set of questions. I think in addition to that at the VP level, you need to diligence the CEO as well too. But yeah, I care about how you work with somebody. I've worked with bosses that I can't manage up to. I can't get them in the right places at the right time. They don't understand metrics and numbers. And they don't have to get deep, but they have to appreciate the value of RevOps.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. So, yeah, I mean, maybe let's talk a bit about, like — so, like, the first couple of years in the career as a RevOps professional. So sort of, like — I mean, I think you listed, like, a few things, but how do you build that foundation to become successful later? Is it a specialization? Is it going, you know, very, very broad, trying out a lot of things? I think you alluded a little bit to that part already. But I'm curious, like, if there's, like, sort of, like, you know, the top three tips on, like, your first two years. If you haven't done these three things, then, you know, definitely, you need to catch up now.

Andy Mowat: Are we talking about your first three years in RevOps, your first three years as a director, or your first three years as a VP? Because the answer is different for each of those first three.

Janis Zech: I think the first three years in RevOps, like, just more generic because director level, you know, it's like — and let's say — I mean, this could also be in SOPs, mops. Right? CS ops. Like, I mean, might be that you're just starting in one function, and then you're thinking about, like, okay, how do I get to the director level?

Andy Mowat: I mean, pick the company and pick a good comp. I see way too many people being really proud of being the only RevOps employee at a shitty company that's going nowhere, right? Like don't fucking do that. Pick a good company, pick a good note, right? So for me, I mean, I kind of figured out and built out RevOps at Upwork. But when I went to Box, it was four fifty million dollars in revenue. It was post IPO and it was insanely well run. And so you get to learn from working with other great people. So the concept of pipeline coverage, most companies don't understand, don't know, don't know how to operationalize it. You can't just do it in Salesforce. At Box, that was like a core meeting between the marketing RevOps and sales teams, right? The RevOps team ran it, but all the other teams were there and we were having conversations. There are all these meetings that occur in companies — the SDR handoff, the marketing to SDR handoff, all these things. If you get to watch those meetings run well, it's ill. You just know what good looks like. And so I would advise early on go to a bigger company. What that'll mean is you're gonna be in a fairly defined role, but you've got the opportunity to build relationships across the company. You've got the ability to be curious and learn. At Carta, for example, one of our mops people was really, really interested in the SOPs side, so we put her on a lot of routing projects and things like that. Like, stick your hand up and you can add to those things. And so I would go to a bigger, more mature company with a good leader over what a lot of people end up doing is, no name company, I'm RevOps, I'm running RevOps, I'm head of RevOps. And you're like, cool, great. Do you actually know what good looks like? They probably — you click in, they don't, right? And so they're just winging it. And I think I started out winging it. I got really good because I learned. I think part of the problem with going big is you don't get your hands dirty in the systems. You don't understand how all the stuff works and you're not playing with it as well. So I think there's always a balance. My favorite candidates have been at a place where they've seen what world class is and they've also been at a startup where they're hungry and scrappy and they understand that too. I think the worst types of candidates are like, I have only been at LinkedIn. And I've been in RevOps at LinkedIn. I'm like, cool, great. But you don't really know how to be scrappy. So LinkedIn is just an example versus a bad company. Have a great well run RevOps team. Yeah, for me, I have a whole article on your career strategy. And I guess a playbook on that, I'll send it over and you guys are welcome to send out some of these when you share the thing. But I think you want to be as thoughtful as possible with the companies you pick. A lot of people are not. They're picking it on other things. Oh, it's a better comp. Or it's got the head of title, which is a bullshit title. That just means that they don't really want to say what the thing is. If you're ahead of one, no — you can't be ahead of one.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I think it's so interesting. Head of is below director for everybody here in the audience.

Andy Mowat: I actually put it above director. Put it at the senior director level myself, but —

Janis Zech: Okay. Interesting. We don't agree on that. Right? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Because in my mind, it's always like you're basically a team lead, then director, you're basically running team leads and then VP runs directors and then SVP. Anyways, I think, obviously, big question — like, how do you find breakout companies? Super hard. Right? Like, VCs try it all the time. Obviously, for your career, it's not easy. Any advice on how do you identify breakout companies? Ideally you wanna join them before they break out, right? Or right when they break out — what's your take on that?

Andy Mowat: Well, Whisperd.com is built for it. It's literally — people can use it for free. We have seven thousand investor backed companies. If you meet a company and you learn something about it, you can contribute in and you can then use that data. The dirty secret on Whisperd is if you come and agree to our confidentiality policy, you can use that on a contribution basis. So if you share one in, you can access one. And so we've been building that database to help people find breakout companies. Executives and VCs and other people contribute to it constantly. More and more is coming there. I think that it's amazing. Like every day I see — I mean, I saw one yesterday flow through. Was like they'd grown from zero to a hundred million in a year. I was like, fuck, never heard about that company. So Whisperd is built that way. Like we're scraping all their growth data. We've got agents out there just constantly going to be able to help people figure that out. So you can start with us. Yeah, talking to friends. What I'd really started with Whisperd was I was like, hey, I'm popping my head up after being a CEO of a failed startup for a little while. I guess I need to go back to big. I just called all my friends. I was like, what do you do when you interview with a company? I have this little Google Sheet. I'm like, cool. What do you do with that sheet? And they're like, nothing. And so I was like, now you're giving that data to me. And so we've been building this — that everyone thinks we're just jobs, we're like, that's one of the four pillars of Whisperd. And I spend a lot of time thinking about who those breakout companies are. We have stuff like just did the deal with Snowflake, accelerated their growth by three X. Like, wow, that's pretty powerful. We also had in there firing their head of RevOps after forty days, firing the number two in RevOps. Leadership doesn't understand RevOps. Like, don't go there under any circumstances.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. So it's really — it reminds me like there's this other — what was the name? RepVue. RepVue, right, I think is like basically for account executives where they can also — you share inputs on a company, how they're doing, OTE attainment, like all this stuff. And then you get access to the database, and then that's a good way to vet a company before you actually join them to understand whether it's like a good company to work for or they have like really harsh, I don't know, like sales team treatment. And they give you an OTE, which is not achievable, and then they screw you on the contract later.

Andy Mowat: Exactly. Yeah. We also, for like pro members, we'll help them research. So we had one person that had an offer to work for a CEO for a hundred plus million dollar breakout company. It's growing really fast. And if you looked on Glassdoor, it was like execs were churning out. So we just called the investors, the two people on the board and we said, hey, here's the situation. Should this person who's a friend of ours go there or not? And they basically were like, well, here's how the CEO works. This is how this person thinks. If you tick like this, don't go. If you tick like this, you can absolutely rock it. The guy's not crazy. He's just really high strung. And this person ticked like that CEO ticked, took the job and in four months got promoted. And so we love helping people make the right decisions on their careers.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Great. Great. And given that you are very deep in the RevOps ecosystem and, like, the hot and sexy companies worth working for in that space, what are some trends that you are observing in RevOps? Like, how have things changed in the last, I don't know, two, three years? I guess, like, you know, maybe another way to ask for it is, like, have you noticed, like, any, like, really crazy changes since the advent of AI, so to speak? Has that changed anything fundamentally or is that, like, about some other stronger trends that you've seen for a longer time?

Andy Mowat: Yeah. So you talked about the job trends or — I think where you're going — said, how do I think about RevOps going forward as a VP? I think AI should and will and is fundamentally changing the role of RevOps. If you don't understand AI, if you're not building in it, if you're not playing with things like Clay or Sales ScaleStack and you're not leveraging agents, you're going to be left behind. So there's the data layer. I say there's the firmographic data layer, which I'm seeing a ton of people innovate on. I have a friend at a company where they'll send out agents to scrape their entire TAM. We're doing it as well for different things to try to understand it. I think there's the product layer, data layer, which you really need to have a deeper partnership with product analytics and the data engineering team. I think all of our core SaaS systems will be reinvented over the next three to five years on top of AI. Dream of a world where I don't have to give reps a shitty Salesforce interface. I think we all know that everyone's like, oh, it's not that good. We're like, yeah, just do it. We all know it's not good. But we also don't wanna spend more money on making the interfaces better. But I see a whole world that's coming and I'm spending a lot of time with those companies of next gen Salesforce built on top of the right data and the reps don't have to input the data. So I think that's also an interesting trade off I have. My general advice is go to world class companies that are growing and learn. But I think the world class companies are gonna be behind in terms of the innovation on some of these. If you're at a big five hundred million dollars revenue company, it's gonna be a lot harder to rip out Salesforce and go more AI native. So I think it's a really interesting time to be in RevOps. I think if you're reactive, the CRO is gonna go put the AI innovation team under somebody else, but it should fundamentally be underneath RevOps. We're wired for that stuff. We know the systems and processes. And so at Carta before I left, we were working on making the business case for two people that did not have run the business responsibilities, but their core job was to go automate stuff within the revenue architecture side. I was really excited about that one. And so, but I really do deeply believe — like, imagine how shitty it's gonna be if there's an AI innovation team, a couple of biz ops people that doesn't report to RevOps. It's just gonna — you're gonna go quit that company really fast.

Janis Zech: I mean, it sounds a bit like a company you don't wanna work for because they fundamentally don't understand the functional skill set of the different teams. Right? It's a good example of like the signal that the executive layer doesn't really understand what RevOps can and should do in my mind.

Andy Mowat: I would agree. I mean, put this as a good quote or something like that. But if you are a CEO and saying, I need more innovation, let me get my biz ops team to do it — I think every RevOps person's like, I'll quit that company pretty fast. Biz ops is great for strategy planning, figuring out alignments and territories, but they don't know how to do. They're kind of like, cool, need to move this and move on, but they don't understand how to solve a problem fundamentally, whereas RevOps knows. And so I think you need to be prepared for this world, which is a brand new world. If you're asking about the market of the jobs for RevOps, I don't think too much about the macro. I think more about the micro because I'm a big believer that everyone can find a role. It's just gotta work hard and you gotta know how to do it and build the playbooks to run. That being said, there are high quality RevOps people on bench in a way that there were not three years ago. So what that means is if you're like a junior director in a name company, you're probably not gonna go get the director level role at a big name company. You're gonna have to hustle a little bit.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, let's assume you are a VP at a successful company. You report to somebody who gets RevOps. What would you say are the top things to make you successful and what's the path from there?

Andy Mowat: You need to be really good cross functionally at building and driving alignment. You need to be really good at forcing trade offs. My role a lot of times is — great new CMO. That person can cause a lot of havoc for my team or they can be a great partner. So I need to go — every time there's a director plus being hired in marketing, CS, or sales, I need to make sure that they're aligned and understand and do that and having all those relationships to be able to do that. You can't be a shrinking wallflower and just let people tell you what to do. And so if you don't have that personality that can get out there, get in the mix, be in those senior level executive conversations, your RevOps team — you aren't able to give your RevOps team the air cover that they need to be successful.

Janis Zech: Should the VP of RevOps be interviewing the CMO before they start, the CRO? I mean, I think the answer is yes, but do you think that's normal? Is that what's typically happening or?

Andy Mowat: I think the answer is absolutely — it depends on the org structure. I think that's why — so for example, when Carta hired their CMO, I was on the interview panel because I was going to be a peer to that person. And I think RevOps matters. I think they should. I think if RevOps is not — here's the thing I look at is like, if you're not in the panel, it's your own fault. It's not like, man, my CRO didn't put me into the interview panel. That's not their fault. That's your fault. You weren't strategic enough. You weren't engaged enough. You didn't ask. I literally said, I would like to be on the panel for the CMO. And they put me on the panel. I think they would've put me on there anyway, but I made sure I was on that panel.

Janis Zech: Awesome. Look, I know you have to run in five minutes, so thanks for sharing all this. I think super helpful. Is there any book you would recommend to our audience?

Andy Mowat: You said I could use an article too, so I will. We have written ninety playbooks on every aspect of exec search. They are all free on the Whisperd.com. First menu item, playbooks. How to work with a talent partner, how to get clarity on your career, one versus two, what is it like to be a director? Everything we've talked about, we've written deep white books about that are all great. So go check it out and have fun.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all this and coming on. Very much appreciate it.

Andy Mowat: You doubt it. Sorry. I swore as much as I did, but I'm passionate about RevOps careers.

Janis Zech: That's great. No kids are listening to this anyway. It's fine. Hopefully. No. But maybe they're, like, really early RevOps people.

Andy Mowat: Maybe. We wish them the best.

Janis Zech: Thank you.